"What is your name?"
The answer is a murmur accompanied by an imploring look. What I hear
sounds like: Mahihehondo. It is a sigh with modulations.
It takes me a week to discover that the boyish patient is called Marie
Lerondeau.
The bed opposite is less confused. I see a little toothless head. From
out the ragged beard comes a peasant voice, broken in tone, but touching
and almost melodious. The man who lies there is called Carre.
They did not come from the same battlefield, but they were hit almost at
the same time, and they have the same wound. Each has a fractured thigh.
Chance brought them together in the same distant ambulance, where their
wounds festered side by side. Since then they have kept together, till
now they lie enfolded by the blue radiance of the Master's gaze.
He looks at both, and shakes his head silently; truly, a bad business!
He can but ask himself which of the two will die first, so great are the
odds against the survival of either.
The white-bearded man considers them in silence, turning in his hand the
cunning knife.
We can know nothing till after this grave debate. The soul must
withdraw, for this is not its hour. Now the knife must divide the flesh,
and lay the ravage bare, and do its work completely.
So the two comrades go to sleep, in that dreadful slumber wherein each
man resembles his own corpse. Henceforth we enter upon the struggle.
We have laid our grasp upon these two bodies; we shall not let them be
snatched from us easily.
The nausea of the awakening, the sharp agony of the first hours are
over, and I begin to discover my new friends.
This requires time and patience. The dressing hour is propitious. The
man lies naked on the table. One sees him as a whole, as also those
great gaping wounds, the objects of so many hopes and fears.
The afternoon is no less favourable to communion, but that is another
matter. Calm has come to them, and these two creatures have ceased to be
nothing but a tortured leg and a screaming mouth.
Carre went ahead at once. He made a veritable bound. Whereas Lerondeau
seemed still wrapped in a kind of plaintive stupor, Carre was already
enfolding me in a deep affectionate gaze. He said:
"You must do all that is necessary."
Lerondeau can as yet only murmur a half articulate phrase:
"Mustn't hurt me."
As soon as I could distinguish and understand the boy's words, I called
him by his Christian name. I would say:
"How are you, Marie?" or "I am pleased with you, Marie."
This familiarity suits him, as does my use of "thee" and "thou" in
talking to him. He very soon guessed that I speak thus only to those who
suffer most, and for whom I have a special tenderness. So I say to him:
"Marie, the wound looks very well today." And every one in the hospital
calls him Marie as I do.
When he is not behaving well, I say:
"Come, be sensible, Lerondeau."
His eyes fill with tears at once. One day I was obliged to try "Monsieur
Lerondeau," and he was so hurt that I had to retract on the spot.
However, he now refrains from grumbling at his orderly, and screaming
too loudly during the dressing of his wound, for he knows that the day
I say to him "Be quiet, Monsiuer"--just Monsiuer--our relations will be
exceedingly strained.
From the first, Carre bore himself like a man. When I entered the
dressing ward, I found the two lying side by side on stretchers which
had been placed on the floor. Carre's emaciated arm emerged from under
his blanket, and he began to lecture Marie on the subject of hope and
courage.... I listened to the quavering voice, I looked at the toothless
face, lit up by a smile, and I felt a curious choking in my throat,
while Lerondeau blinked like a child who is being scolded. Then I went
out of the room, because this was a matter between those two lying on
the ground, and had nothing to do with me, a robust person, standing on
my feet.
Since then, Carre has proved that he had a right to preach courage to
young Lerondeau.
While the dressing is being prepared, he lies on the ground with the
others, waiting his turn, and says very little. He looks gravely round
him, and smiles when his eyes meet mine. He is not proud, but he is not
one of those who are ready to chatter to every one. One does not come
into this ward to talk, but to suffer, and Carre is bracing himself to
suffer as decently as possible.
When he is not quite sure of himself, he warns me, saying:
"I am not as strong as usual to-day."
Nine times, out of ten, he is "as strong as usual," but he is so thin,
so wasted, so reduced by his mighty task, that he is sometimes obliged
to beat a retreat. He does it with honour, with dignity. He has just
said: "My knee is terribly painful," and the sentence almost ends in a
scream. Then, feeling that he is about to howl like the others, Carre
begins to sing.
The first time this happened I did not quite understand what was going
on. He repeated the one phrase again and again: "Oh, the pain in my
knee!" And gradually I became aware that this lament was becoming a
real melody, and for five long minutes Carre improvised a terrible,
wonderful, heart-rending song on "the pain in his knee." Since then this
has become a habit, and he begins to sing suddenly as soon as he feels
that he can no longer keep silence.
Among his improvisations he will introduce old airs. I prefer not to
look at his face when he begins: "Il n'est ni beau ni grand mon verre."
Indeed, I have a good excuse for not looking at it, for I am very busy
with his poor leg, which gives me much anxiety, and has to be handled
with infinite precautions.
I do "all that is necessary," introducing the burning tincture of iodine
several times. Carre feels the sting; and when, passing by his corner
an hour later, I listen for a moment, I hear him slowly chanting in
a trembling but melodious voice the theme: "He gave me tincture of
iodine."
Carre is proud of showing courage.
This morning he seemed so weak that I tried to be as quick as possible
and to keep my ears shut. But presently a stranger came into the ward.
Carre turned his head slightly, saw the visitor, and frowning, began to
sing:
"Il n'est ni beau ni grand mon verre."
The stranger looked at him with tears in his eyes but the more he
looked, the more resolutely Carre smiled, clutching the edges of the
table with his two quivering hands.
Lerondeau has good strong teeth. Carre has nothing but black stumps.
This distresses me, for a man with a fractured thigh needs good teeth.
Lerondeau is still at death's door, but though moribund, he can eat. He
attacks his meat with a well-armed jaw; he bites with animal energy, and
seems to fasten upon anything substantial.
Carre, for his part, is well-inclined to eat; but what can he do with
his old stumps?
"Besides," he says, "I was never very carnivorous."
Accordingly, he prefers to smoke. In view of lying perpetually upon
his back, he arranged the cover of a cardboard box upon his chest;
the cigarette ash falls into this, and Carre smokes without moving, in
cleanly fashion.
I look at the ash, the smoke, the yellow, emaciated face, and reflect
sadly that it is not enough to have the will to live; one must have
teeth.
Not every one knows how to suffer, and even when we know, we must set
about it the right way, if we are to come off with honour. As soon as he
is on the table, Carre looks round him and asks:
"Isn't there any one to squeeze my head to-day?"
If there is no answer, he repeats anxiously:
"Who is going to squeeze my head to-day?"
Then a nurse approaches, takes his head between her hands and
presses.... I can begin; as soon as some one is "squeezing his head"
Carre is good.
Lerondeau's method is different. He wants some one to hold his hands.
When there is no one to do this, he shrieks: "I shall fall."
It is no use to tell him that he is on a solid table, and that he need
not be afraid. He gropes about for the helpful hands, and cries, the
sweat breaking out on his brow: "I know I shall fall." Then I get
some one to come and hold his hands, for suffering, at any rate, is a
reality....
Each sufferer has his characteristic cry when the dressing is going on.
The poor have only one, a simple cry that does service for them all. It
makes one think of the women who, when they are bringing a child into
the world, repeat, at every pain, the one complaint they have adopted.
Carre has a great many varied cries, and he does not say the same thing
when the dressing is removed, and when the forceps are applied.